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Introduction to Battle of the Blondes

One of our primary features this month
on TCM is something we're calling "Battle of the
Blondes," a chance for all dedicated film watchers
to look, observe, enjoy and then decide which of
the famous movie blondes you most prefer: Marilyn
or Jayne, Ursula or Brigitte, our cover girl Diana
(as in Dors) or Grace-who-became-a-Princess (pictured on right),
maybe European-born Marlene or New York
native Mae. We'll be specifically calling attention
to 18 famous movie towheads throughout
November -- each and every one a blonde bombshell known to have bewitched and dazzled
moviegoers, some because they sizzled like Lana or
tantalized like Veronica-with-her-peek-a-boobang,
others because they made us laugh as did
Judy (as in Holliday) and Carole (as in Lombard).

There are also those blondies who not only
possessed an abundance of s.a. but also sang and
danced in the process (think: Betty Grable, the
most popular female movie star of the World War
II years, and Doris Day, the movie's definitive girl
next door in the '50s.). Every Monday and
Wednesday throughout the month we'll have a
spotlight pinned on two of the aforementioned
movie blondes or their peers, some in films we'll
be showing for the first time on TCM, including
Grable's 1940 Down Argentine Way (which
includes a defining moment in which she goes
from being a likeable but ordinary cutie to a
genuine, Grade-A star) and 1943's Sweet Rosie
O'Grady; also Jayne Mansfield's 1956 cult favorite
The Girl Can't Help It; and Monroe's 1954 There's
No Business Like Show Business (the last we'll
actually be showing on November 27 as part of a
salute not to MM but to her costar in the film,
Broadway dynamo Ethel Merman).

On
November 16, as part of our Lombard salute, we'll
all be proudly showing off a new and upgraded
Technicolor print of her classic screwball comedy
Nothing Sacred (1937), a film which until now has
only been available to us in a grainy, seriously
flawed print. It's all going to make for an extremely
varied and entertaining month, a mix of film
noir and musicals, melodramas and first-cabin
comedies from a wide range of decades from the
1930s to the 1980s. Interestingly, the tough part
of planning this salute to movie blondes wasn't
figuring out which ladies to feature but facing the
fact that so many of the great blonde bombshells
of the movies weren't really blondes at all. A case
in point: Lana Turner. Yes, she became the
movies' most famous blonde femme fatale in the
1940s but was born not a blonde, but a brunette.
Moviegoers initially saw her with her natural
brunette tresses; then for a few years she became a
redhead, and was actually nicknamed "Red" in
several of her early films, including 1941's Ziegfeld
Girl in which those red tresses were subtly
lightened into what was dubbed a "golden blonde"
hue. The more blonde she became, the more
powerful the Turner impact, leading to her
becoming a platinum blonde legend with 1946's
The Postman Always Rings Twice. Stick with us this
month and you'll find that behind every movie
blonde there's a great story. And, alas, quite often
also a bottle of peroxide.